News & Announcements

Board of Directors’ January 2024 meeting materials now available

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The Council’s January 25-26, 2023 Board of Directors meeting will be held in-person in Anchorage, Alaska. The meeting will also be available virtually and telephonically for those unable to travel.

Join the meeting: Meeting audio and video, including presentations, will be available streaming online via Zoom (available starting January 26 by 8:00 a.m.) or by calling 1-888-788-0099, reference meeting ID 846 6601 3879

A complete meeting packet will be available for download HERE, on or before January 19, 2024.

TitleView Document
1 00 Final Agenda PWSRCAC Board Meeting, January 25 26, 2024 In Anchorage
1 01 Draft Minutes of September 21 22, 2023
1 02 Draft Minutes of November 21, 2023
2 01 List of Commonly Used Acronyms
2 02 Budget Status Report as of December 19, 2023
2 03 PWSRCAC Director Attendance
2 04 Committee Member Attendance Record
2 05 List of Board Committee Members
2 06 One Page Strategic Plan
2 07 List of Recent Board and Executive Committee Actions
2 08 PWSRCAC Organizational Chart
3 01 Contract Approval for Air Quality Monitoring at the VMT
3 02 Approval of FY24 Contract with Taku Engineering for Engineering Support
4 01 Report Acceptance 2022 2023 LTEMP
4 02 Approval of Fy2024 Budget Modifications
4 03 2023 VMT C Plan Renewal & Approval of C Plan Contract Increase
4 03 PRESENTATION 2023 VMT C Plan Renewal and Approval of C Plan Contract Increase
4 04 Consideration of Oil Spill Region Recreation Coalition as Class I Member
4 05 Director Appointment for Oil Spill Region Recreational Coalition
4 06 Report Approval PWSRCAC Annual Long Range Plan
5 01 Program and Project Status Report
Complete Packet January 2024 Board Meeting
PRESENTATION Alyeska/SERVS’ Activity Report – January 2024
PRESENTATION by Alaska Tanker Co. on upgrades and changes to their Alaska fleet
PRESENTATION by Native Village of Eyak (NVE) on Shepard Point Facility
PRESENTATION Hope Spot Designation for Prince William Sound

Anyone experiencing COVID-19 symptoms should not attend the meeting in-person

Board meetings are open to the public, and an opportunity for the public to provide comments is provided at the beginning of each meeting.

Science Night 2023 – Videos now available

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Systems and Methods: Connecting across the Exxon Valdez oil spill region

Science Night is an annual event hosted by the Prince William Regional Citizens Advisory Council. Topics focus on research related to the safe transportation of oil through Prince William Sound.

Individual presentations can be viewed below, or you can view the full playlist directly on the Council’s Youtube Channel: Science Night 2023

On this page:

  1. Let the Hydrocarbons in Prince William Sound Talk
  2. Forage Fish Update
  3. Tsumani/landslide hazards in Prince William Sound
  4. Alaska Spill Response Wildlife Aid

Let the Hydrocarbons in Prince William Sound Talk: 30 years of Environmental Monitoring through PWSRCAC’s LTEMP

Presenter: Dr. Morgan Bender, Senior Scientist, Owl Ridge Natural Resource Consultants, Inc.

The PWSRCAC’s Long-Term Environmental Monitoring Program (LTEMP) is one of the longest-standing hydrocarbon assessment programs of its kind and provides us with annual data on how and where hydrocarbons enter Prince William Sound and the potential effects they may have on the marine ecosystem. Morgan, an Alaska-based ecotoxicologist, will lead us through the 30-year LTEMP investigative process and major findings to inform and excite Science Night participants on LTEMP’s past, present, and future.

View Let the Hydrocarbons in Prince William Sound Talk directly on YouTube.

Forage Fish Update

Presenter: Scott Pegau, Research Program Manager, Oil Spill Recovery Institute

Forage fish provide a critical link between plankton and large predators like birds, mammals, and other fish. Pacific herring, sand lance, capelin, and juvenile pollock are a few of the many forage fish in PWS. Most of the information we have on forage fish is associated with herring because of its historic commercial importance but there is some information on other species. This presentation takes a look at some of the existing research into forage fish in Prince William Sound.

View Forage Fish Update directly on YouTube.

Advancing our understanding of tsunamigenic landslide hazards in Prince William Sound, Alaska

Presenter: Dennis M. Staley, Research Physical Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey – Alaska Volcano Observatory

Exposure to landslide and tsunami hazards are a part of life for those who reside in the seaside communities of coastal Alaska and the people who work or recreate in coastal waterways. Recently, the recognition of the landslide-generated tsunami hazard posed by the Barry Arm landslide in northwestern Prince William Sound has attracted considerable attention in the public and media, at local, state, and federal governments, and in the scientific community. This presentation focuses on the ongoing effort to assess hazard and warn for a tsunami produced by the Barry Arm landslide, and on scientific investigations into the prevalence of this type of natural hazard at other locations in Prince William Sound.

View Advancing our understanding of tsunamigenic landslide hazards in Prince William Sound directly on YouTube.

Alaska Spill Response Wildlife Aid

Presenter: Bridget Crokus, Deputy Oil Spill Response Coordinator, USFWS Alaska Region

Protecting fish, wildlife, and their habitats is a primary response objective after an oil spill. First-hand accounts of wildlife in or near an oil spill are invaluable to a successful wildlife response. Bridget will present the Alaska Spill Response Wildlife ID Aid, a tool developed to help spill responders “take a wildlife minute” and record the wildlife they see.

View Alaska Spill Response Wildlife Aid directly on YouTube.

Annual Report now available

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Front cover of the report. Image is of a rocky beach in Prince William Sound covered with mussels and other tidal critters. Mountains and ocean in the background. Clicking on the image will download a PDF of the report.The Council’s annual report, Year in Review 2022/2023, is now available. This report covers the many programs and projects we’ve been working on over the past year, such as oil spill prevention and response, environmental monitoring, oil spill contingency plans, operations at the Valdez Marine Terminal, invasive species monitoring, our outreach efforts, and much more. Highlights from this year include:

  • An assessment of risks and safety culture at the Valdez Marine Terminal
  • Ensuring the adequacy of secondary containment liners for the terminal’s crude oil storage tanks
  • Supporting solutions for sustainable funding for state spill
    prevention and response
  • Improvements to how the Council monitors weather and sea currents in our region
  • Monitoring oil spill drills and exercises
  • Reexamining the Council’s position on use of dispersants in our region

Download: 2022-2023 Annual Report

Decades-old monitoring program still innovating

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Thirty years ago, a new Council program was just getting underway. The assignment for the new Long-Term Environmental Monitoring Program was to identify adverse impacts of the oil industry on the ecosystems in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska.

Just a few years prior, as a result of the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill, the U.S. Congress had passed a law requiring such a monitoring program.

The Council worked with researchers to develop the program’s plan that, with some modifications to incorporate new technologies, is still in existence today.

Copying the approach taken by NOAA to monitor other areas, the program developers included two main tasks. Those were to combine chemical and biological assessment tools to determine whether hydrocarbons from the nearby oil industry:

  1. Accumulated in nearby sediments
  2. Affected nearby aquatic organisms

Starting in 1993, researchers began collecting samples of the sediments and blue mussels. Ten locations were chosen throughout Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska, largely following the path of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

The monitoring in Port Valdez is mostly focused on assessing the environmental impacts of the Valdez Marine Terminal while the monitoring elsewhere is focused on assessing the impacts of oil tankers, including possible lingering oil from the Exxon Valdez spill. In addition to sites that were heavily oiled in 1989, the monitoring is also done at clean, unoiled sites for comparison.

Mussels were chosen because they filter large amounts of water and they remain in one location. They have been shown to accumulate hydrocarbons when they are nearby, and to eliminate the hydrocarbons during cleaner conditions. This means mussels reflect what is happening in their environment better than other organisms.

The program today

Three types of samples are analyzed today. Mussels and sediments are collected as in years past, and in 2016, researchers added a new tool called a passive sampling device. These are special plastic strips deployed underwater to which oil particles adhere. They can detect lower levels of hydrocarbons than the mussel and sediment sampling.

All three sample types are sent out to laboratories for chemical analysis. The labs measure and report the various types of oil contamination. Then scientists interpret the data.

Effects on genes: In 2019, the Council began looking into new methods to measure the impacts of oil on organisms in the environment. Researchers conducted a pilot study, analyzing genes of mussels using a technique known as “transcriptomics.”

Transcriptomics involves measuring how particular genes are expressed in an organism. This expression can be affected by conditions in the environment, such as exposure to hydrocarbons.

Read more about this work: Long-Term Environmental Monitoring

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